On Friday the FCC’s Media Bureau quietly announced that it adopted an order to allow FM stations broadcasting a digital HD signal to increase their power levels up a maximum of 10% of the power of their main analog signal. While the National Association of Broadcasting and iBiquity have been agitating for this change for […]
Amazon.com Widgets In January of 2000 struggles over the management of the Pacifica Foundation were at a fever pitch. As the owner of five major community radio stations in New York, LA, Berkeley, Houston and Washington DC, as well as the national Pacifica Network, the Pacifica National Board and its executive director were accused of […]
For me, the main reason that I’m so addicted to doing a radio show week after week is the music. I’m interested in new, independent, underground, and underexposed sounds and artists and the easiest way for me to get access to this music is by volunteering at a college radio station. I’m lucky that at […]
Every Thursday night I drive home from Santa Cruz, where I teach at the University of California campus situated in that fair city. Soon as 8 pm comes around, I tune into KPFA to listen to the Bonnie Simmons / Derk Richardson music show, which I absolutely love. To be accurate, they’re actually two separate […]
I’m a media geek, hence my nom de internet. And I pretty much have always been, ever since I recognized that there were people, organizations and companies behind the shows I saw on TV and listened to on the radio. I remember reading Billboard and Radio and Electronics in the library while still in elementary […]
One of terrestrial radio’s many benefits is that is has the capacity to be a resource for the local listening community. Since in recent years there has been less and less local content on commercial stations, there’s a great opportunity for college and community radio stations to put even more emphasis on the needs of […]
Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez’s radio/TV program Democracy Now! is, without question, the most successful media vehicle in the history of the United States Left. Launched at Pacifica station WBAI-FM in New York City in the mid-1990s, it is now an independent venture, subscribed to by over 800 radio, TV, and Internet stations around the […]
Late night has always been a special time for radio, ever since station owners decided not to turn off the transmitter at midnight. Now that it’s no longer necessary to have a live human being operating the station during all the hours it’s on air, commercial late night radio is mostly a bland mash of […]
Debuting back in 1987, way before pirates were ever deemed cool and a full 8 years before “Talk Like a Pirate Day” was ever conceptualized, Skulltime for Kids hit the airwaves of Foothill College radio station KFJC 89.7 FM in Los Altos Hills, California. Captain Jack, the creator of the show, told me that the […]
As a proud thirty-eight year-old member of Generation X, I have become just a little disturbed by a trend I’ve noticed in the last few years. One might call this trend the “indie-rockification” of public radio. As my fellow grunge-survivors and I, raised on the so-called “first wave” of alternative rock and derided by boomers […]
